Walking Seattle: 35 Tours of the Jet City's Parks, Landmarks, Neighborhoods, and Scenic Views - Softcover

Humphrey, Clark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0899978134 ISBN 13: 9780899978130

Publisher: Wilderness Press, 2018

Synopsis

Get to Know the Jet City’s Most Vibrant and Historic Neighborhoods

Grab your walking shoes, and become an urban adventurer. Clark Humphrey guides you through 35 unique walking tours in this comprehensive guidebook. Go beyond the obvious with tours that showcase cozy bungalows, stately mansions, postmodern palaces, and outdoor art. Soak up Seattle’s history, parks, and vibe. Wander wide boulevards, narrow cobblestone lanes, and pedestrian pathways to Pioneer Square, Queen Anne Hill, the University of Washington campus, Foster Island, and beyond.

Each self-guided tour includes full-color photographs, a map, and need-to-know details like distance, difficulty, points of interest, and more. You’ll soak up history, backstories, architectural trivia, and fun facts to share with others while on your way to the best restaurants, bars, and shops in Washington. So find a route that appeals to you, and walk Seattle!

About this title

About the Author:

Clark Humphrey has seen Seattle transform from a boom-and-bust industrial city into today’s fast-growing, fast-moving tech mecca. His other books include Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story (reissued by MISCmedia), as well as Vanishing Seattle and Seattle’s Belltown (both by Arcadia Publishing). He writes daily about the city, its growth, and its contradictions at miscmedia.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Discovery Park to Ballard Locks
Kites, Boats, and Powwows

• BOUNDARIES: 36th Ave. W., Discovery Park Blvd., Utah Ave., 32nd Ave. NW, and NW 54th St.
• DISTANCE: 5 miles
• DIFFICULTY: Difficult (one steep uphill trail)
• PARKING: Free parking in Discovery Park east lot, just inside the Government Way entrance
• PUBLIC TRANSIT: Metro routes 24 and 33 stop near this walk’s start. Routes 17, 29, and 44 stop near its end.

Two of Seattle’s most popular scenic spots are legacies from the U.S. Army. The former Fort Lawton in northwest Magnolia, which Seattle gave the Army in 1900 and the Army returned to the city in 1972, is now Discovery Park. The city’s biggest park encompasses 534 acres, mostly reclaimed for nature and nature-loving humans. It has walking trails ranging from flat to steep and a restored lighthouse guarding a wide beachfront. Just north of Discovery, the Hiram M. Chittenden (also known as Ballard) Locks, built in 1916 and managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, is the gateway between Lakes Union and Washington. A key passageway for both pleasure and commercial boats (and for our precious salmon), it also serves as a water-level footbridge across the Lake Washington Ship Canal, with finely landscaped grounds at both ends.

Walk Description

Start at Discovery Park’s east entrance, 36th Ave. W. and Discovery Park Blvd. Take the separate sidewalk to the south of the vehicular road.

The first left turn you can take from here leads you, past a parking lot, to the Discovery Park Visitor Center. From there backtrack to, and continue westward on, Discovery Park Blvd., and then turn left onto Washington Ave. This road is initially heavily wooded with mostly deciduous trees. At the top of a mild slope you reach a large clearing.

Washington Ave. heads west, past the Fort Lawton Historic District, two stretches of white-and-yellow painted wood buildings (including officers’ residences, a chapel, a bus shelter, and a gym) separated by a huge open meadow (a great place for kite flying and running about). Some of the buildings have been rehabbed as private homes. Amid these old wooden structures sits a piece of Cold War tech, a radar tower shaped like a giant golf ball.

Washington Ave. intersects with Oregon Ave. Turn right (north) on Oregon, as it bends northwest then southwest and intersects with Idaho Ave. Turn right (north) on Idaho toward an old, long bus shelter. (Like many of the old fort structures, it was a location in the 1973 James Caan movie Cinderella Liberty.) North of this shelter, turn left on the path that parellels Discovery Park Blvd. It leads initially through a meadow with small trees and shrubs.

Head west on this path as it winds gently downhill, past the old fort stables, then past a 1950s suburban-style military housing tract (which may or may not be still standing as you read this). You might wish to hold your nose as you approach the West Point Treatment Plant. (At least they’re scrubbing the city’s wastewater now. They used to just pipe it out to sea.)

Past the plant, the air turns to the aroma of salt water as you approach the West Point Lighthouse, still warning ships after 130 years. The city undertook a major restoration of the brick-and-stucco building in 2009–2010. The point itself separates South Beach and North Beach.

Turn east onto North Beach. Turn just inland from the beach onto a main dirt trail that winds between the shore and the treatment plant’s north wall, which is mostly obscured by plants. This trail passes an aquatic-bird habitat, a series of shallow ponds and marshes. At its end, the trail connects with a steep switchback path that bends uphill and back into the main park.

If you’d like an easier trod to and from the beach, follow this part of the walk in reverse, as follows: where Discovery Park Blvd. bends northwest, turn onto a side path that starts parallel on the road’s right side. This path bends north to the steep path down the bluff to the beach. Turn southwest along the shoreline to the lighthouse. Turn east onto Discovery Park Blvd., winding gently uphill back to the beginning of the side path. Take a hard left, heading northbound this time, and in less than 0.5 mile, you’ll see Daybreak Star, as noted below, to your left.

Coming from North Beach, at the top of the hill, the trail leading from the hill climb forks. Take the left (south-southeastern) fork to another paved road. Beyond that, you find a concrete restroom structure to your left. Beyond that, turn left onto the Loop Trail. Take another left onto another paved road heading north.

This road takes you toward the southern side of the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center. The United Indians of All Tribes Foundation established the arts and educational facility in 1973 after American Indian activists staged a 1970 sit-in on the soon-to-be-abandoned fort property. Take a left onto the center’s grounds, around the striking angular building (resembling an eight-sided star) with tribal motifs within and without.

Turn right on the road north of Daybreak Star, heading east then bending southeast. You’re soon surrounded by another thickly forested area. See if you can spot some of the many small and large birds in the park (more than 200 different species, according to the Seattle Audubon Society). This unnamed road intersects with Texas Way. If you want to end your walk now, take a right onto Texas Way to a route 33 bus stop. Or you can turn south from that bus stop and onto Illinois Ave., which leads back to Washington Ave. and the park’s east entrance.

To continue with this walk’s second leg, turn east (left) on Texas Way, then north (left) on 40th Ave. W. and out of the park. Turn east (right) onto W. Commodore Way. On its north side are some large waterfront homes, many equipped with their own private boat docks. Soon you pass under the lovely rust-colored iron lattice that is the BNSF Railway’s Salmon Bay Bridge. The 1914 drawbridge has a huge overhead counterweight on the north half of its single-truss superstructure.

This bridge’s southern approach lies at the western end of Commodore Park, part of the Ballard Locks’ spiffy grounds. Take the paved walk past the bushes and flower beds, east to the locks, and take a left.

Within the lower level of the locks’ pedestrian passage, a dark room with big picture windows looks in on the fish ladder, built into the locks to help salmon return to spawn. You can view the ladder from above when you walk up the short outdoor ramp to the roof. A sculpture here by Paul Sorey called Salmon Waves depicts metallic ocean waves swirling up.

The fish ladder’s roof is the entry to the locks’ pedestrian passage. It takes you over the spillway structure, then, with swinging metal footbridges, across the two locks. Watch the boats enter the locks, whose water level is either filled or lowered. (The Corps of Engineers, which maintains the Lake Washington Ship Canal system, keeps the freshwater east of the locks 20 to 22 feet higher than the saltwater west of the locks.) On the north side of the locks, depending on which footbridges are open, you could be east or west of a concrete castle. It’s the locks’ office and visitor center, and it happens to look like the Corps of Engineers’ fortress logo. Take the sidewalk to its west, heading north through the Carl S. English Jr. Botanical Garden. The English-style garden holds more than 500 plant species from across the world.

Take this paved walk north and out of the locks’ grounds, to NW 54th St. To your right is the Lockspot Cafe, a quaint seafood grill and bar. One block to your left, at 32nd Ave. NW, is Red Mill Totem House, a veteran fish-and-chips shop designed to imitate a Northwest tribal longhouse. The local Red Mill hamburger chain took over the space, serving Totem House’s seafood specialties as well as Red Mill’s burgers.

One block north, at 32nd and NW Market St., is a stop for bus route 17 to downtown. This walk connects easily to two other walks. It starts 1.3 miles north of Walk 17 and ends 0.5 mile west of Walk 22.

Points of Interest

1. Discovery Park Visitor Center 3801 Discovery Park Blvd., 206-386-4236, seattle.gov/parks/find /centers/discovery-park-environmental-learning-center
2. West Point Lighthouse At the foot of Utah Ave. in Discovery Park, 206-386-4236
3. Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center 5011 Bernie Whitebear Way, 206-285-4425, unitedindians.org
4. Ballard (Hiram M. Chittenden) Locks 3015 NW 54th St., 206-780-2500, nws.usace.army.mil
5. Lockspot Cafe 3005 NW 54th St., 206-789-4865, thelockspotcafe.com
6. Red Mill Totem House 3058 NW 54th St., 206-784-1400, redmillburgers.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Wilderness Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0899978134
• ISBN 13: 9780899978130
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 200